


Loose Beginnings

by V_Arakawa



Category: Torchwood
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Ianto Jones Backstory, M/M, POV First Person, POV Ianto Jones, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 01:11:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1532045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_Arakawa/pseuds/V_Arakawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto recounts the first few months of working at Torchwood Cardiff. Includes SPOILERS for series one and two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loose Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> There are already zillion of Jack/Ianto first time fan fics out there, but that still didn't keep me from writing my own.
> 
> I returned to an idea I used in my earlier piece "In the Deep of the Night", that what Ianto says and thinks are two different things. His thoughts are all in italics.
> 
> Unbeta'd, all faults are my own. First posted here.

Why was I crying when I left the warehouse? Because that odd captain had turned me on even though my badly injured girlfriend was lying in the freezing dark of some abandoned building? I had rescued her, had followed her instructions for rebuilding that conversion unit, had promised to make her human again because I loved her. I was hers and no one else's. I would always feel attracted to her, no matter how much metal obscured her beautiful skin. And I especially wouldn't stop being attracted to her because some bloke came around. I wasn't interested in blokes, I was interested in her. I had asked for that job to find a cure for her. To help her. Her.

_I really like that coat._

Or so I told myself when I returned to the abandoned building on the outskirts of Cardiff. I still found it amazing that I had managed to bring Lisa and all the equipment from Torchwood London here. Yes, the bribery had robbed me of most of my savings, but it had been worth it. 

_51st century pheromones..._

Lisa’s hand was oddly cold, as if the metal was sucking all the warmth from her body. She didn’t complain, but I still felt obliged to drape a woollen blanket over her. I sat next to her for hours, caressing her hand, telling her about the pterodactyl and that I would start working for Torchwood Cardiff, finding a cure for her. When I ran out of things to say, I just held her hand to my cheek, the way I always did when I needed some reassurance. I closed my eyes, caressed her hand – and suddenly the captain's image floated into my mind. Those electric blue eyes. That dazzling smile. The smell-- Shit! I opened my eyes. What was I thinking? I was holding my girlfriend's hand, for heaven's sake! 

_He's beautiful._

"You okay?" Lisa's voice was weak.

"Yes, yes. Just... just a little tired." I tried to smile a reassuring smile, but didn't quite manage. 

_Need some warmth._

"Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be early." Lisa tried to squeeze my hand, but barely managed to. I nodded weakly and kissed her good night. I got no kiss back, but it didn't matter because I would soon find a cure for her and everything would return back to normal. 

_Feel so lonely._

I went to sleep on the dingy, smelly couch in what must have been the building's living room. It wasn't comfortable and I was freezing in my suit, still soaked with Welsh rain. In another time, another place, I would have shared Lisa’s blanket, but now that was impossible. I closed my eyes, tried to count sheep. But instead I once again got Captain Harkness. His skin. His breath. His image alone was sending my blood straight into my cock. Terror-struck, I realized that there might be yet another explanation for my tears earlier that night: I had been crying because I hadn't gone for it. If I had just kissed him, I could have had him, right there next to the sedated pterodactyl. My eyes were wide open as soon as that thought had formed in my mind. What was going on with my brain? Why would I have wanted to shag my future employer? 

_Still want to._

I wasn't interested in him! 

_His skin is so warm._

I had Lisa! I wanted her, and no one else! 

_Want._

I wasn’t able to sleep that night. Instead my thoughts were running wild, jumping from Lisa to Captain Harkness and back again, making me shiver, letting my stomach constrict. When my alarm rang, I was lying on my back, staring at the ceiling. I didn’t have a mirror, but I knew I looked terrible. My only hope was that no one would notice. It was my first day and I had to shine brighter than the sun, otherwise Captain Harkness would fire me – right after buying lunch for everyone, I supposed.

_Please don’t._

Lucky for me, the Rift had chosen my first day to be particularly active. I had barely arrived at the enormous underground hub when the computers already started beeping. Captain Harkness shouted something about “old pizza boxes” and “cleaning” and was out of the door with the rest of his team.

_He’s even handsome when he’s in a hurry._

Looking around the strange place, I immediately saw what he had meant. The Hub was a mess. Not just old pizza boxes were lying around, there were also Chinese take-out boxes, almost empty coffee mugs and beer bottles, candy bar wrappers, and of course all kinds of apparently alien devices. One thing was for sure: if they hadn’t noticed the alien mildew living under the couch (fortunately herbivore), they would never notice if I set up camp for Lisa somewhere in here. Torchwood London’s data had indicated that the Cardiff Hub was several storeys deep, so no need to worry about space. Maybe I could even find some place to sleep for myself in here, to be close to Lisa.

_To be close to the captain._

When the team returned, I had managed to clean up at least the greatest mess and was able to serve a fresh round of coffee. Surprisingly, the coffee machine had been kept in ship-shape and was only fed with the finest coffee beans available. Captain Harkness gave me his dazzling smile when he smelled the coffee, but before I was able to bring him his mug, he had thrown me his greatcoat and pale blue shirt.

“Orothraxian slime – make sure you soak it in water before you take it to the dry-cleaning.”

“Certainly, sir.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn’t really matter since my brain had decided it was more interested in the captain’s white t-shirt. _And the well-defined muscles underneath._

He grabbed his coffee – the white-and-blue striped mug, I noted – and took a long gulp from it. He grinned at me before turning to his team. “Everyone, this is Ianto Jones. Comes to us from Torchwood London. He may look good in a suit, but it’s really his coffee-making skills you should be praising him for.” I felt myself blushing, though I didn’t quite know for which part of the statement. He turned back to me. “This is my team: Suzie Costello, second-in-command. Owen Harper, our resident doctor. Toshiko Sato, computer genius. As you see, we’re lacking someone for the archive, so when you’re finished cleaning up here, you could start tackling that. Oh, and someone needs to take care of our reception-slash-fake-tourist-office upstairs…” With that, he vanished into his office.

_What did he say? And does it matter when he looks so good?_

I quickly found out that I had underestimated what it meant to be Torchwood Cardiff’s butler – or rather, their girl Friday. My official job title seemed to be “receptionist”, but actually I was made responsible for everything nobody else wanted to do: feed the pterodactyl (that I had secretly christened Myfanwy), clean the office (including the bathroom), take their clothes to dry-cleaning, buy lunch, make coffee, run the tourist office (which was surprisingly highly frequented), answer calls (meaning lying about the captain’s whereabouts), taking care of the SUV… 

_Battering Captain Harkness’ coat._

On the bright side, my never-ending list of tasks also meant that nobody was suspicious when I stayed long past the official working hours. It was surprisingly easy to find an unused and unfrequented store room deep down in the Hub and to transport Lisa there in the deep of the night. It was even easier for me to use the adjoining room of the tourist office as my “apartment”. I was puzzled why someone would put a camp bed into the “staff only” area, but figured that it must have something to do with Torchwood’s unusual working hours.

_Maybe Captain Harkness uses it from time to time._

Not that I got much sleep. I spent most of my nights sitting next to Lisa, telling her about my inquiries into possible treatments. Somewhere in the depths of the Internet of conspiracy theories, I had found a reference to a Japanese team of researchers working on cybernetics and especially Cybermen. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep me going. Also, holding Lisa’s hand reminded me that I still had a girlfriend and that I would be committed to her, no matter what.

_Although – maybe the captain could change my opinion._

As my days at Torchwood Cardiff passed by, I began to notice that Captain Harkness never seemed to miss an opportunity to touch me or to make some comment about me – well, mostly my suits (which were always in ship-shape, thanks to dry-cleaning). The rest of the team did not seem to hear them or simply ignored them, but to me it was obvious that the captain did not treat them in the same fashion. Even when he grinned at all of us, his grin for me always seemed to be especially bright. I didn’t smile back, but I felt flattered. Or more precisely, a million butterflies suddenly seemed to inhabit my stomach. I tried to ignore the feeling, but I knew all too well what it meant. I had felt the same when Lisa and I had started dating.

_Dating a captain…_

The other thing I noticed was that Cardiff was prone to visits from slime- and goo-producing aliens. Most of these secretions loved cotton and other fabrics, destroying shirts, pants and boots on a regular basis. And those clothes that had survived the alien encounters were practically guaranteed to soon fall prey to Weevil teeth. In other words, I saw Captain Harkness’ t-shirt on a regular basis. And just when I noticed with some relief that it didn’t arouse me all that much anymore, alien slime destroyed his t-shirt as well and I saw his naked chest for the first time.

_No hair. I wonder how that feels under my fingers…_

I felt my knees tremble and was disappointed and relieved at the same time when he quickly fetched a fresh white shirt from one of his desk drawers. He grinned at me and said something, but my mind was too occupied with the impression of his muscles to notice what exactly it was. That night was the first time I didn’t go to Lisa.

_I hope he doesn’t prefer his partners shaved._

I started to dream again. But instead of dreaming about Lisa and me taking a walk on a sunny beach, Captain Harkness began to invade my nightly retreats. At first it was merely his bright blue eyes, then came his smile, and little by little the whole person moved in. As the weeks wore on, the dream captain got rid of his greatcoat, his t-shirt and finally his pants. Dream me followed suit until roughly three months after my first encounter with the real Captain Harkness I had my first wet dream in what seemed like years. I cursed myself during the whole day and tried to avoid the captain, but with no luck.

_It was just a dream, but it felt so good._

It didn’t help much that on that exact day, some monster with razor-sharp teeth took a liking to his pants and tore them apart from the knee downwards. As he took the remains off, I got to witness his underwear for the first time. It was almost too late when I awoke to the fact that I was staring at his crotch the whole time – and at his ass when he turned around for no particular reason.

_He’s trying to seduce me. Only me. That’s… good._

As soon as he was fully dressed again, I vanished into the tourist office for the rest of the day. I didn’t want to be alone with my brain, and the long and repetitive conversations with elderly couples looking for a decent restaurant “with typical Welsh food, not those greasy fish-and-chips parlours” were exactly what I needed. Only when the flood of tourists ceded did I notice that it was already half past nine. I thought about going to Lisa, but how could I hold her hand when my mind would again wander off to Captain Harkness’ underwear?

"You still here?"

I jumped. There he was, leaning in the secret passageway to the Hub, grinning. I gulped. "You are as well," I managed to say. _You’re so handsome._

"Yeah, but I'm the boss. Overtime’s kind of expected from me." He winked and my mind began to wander again.

My lips were dry. "Well, I... I'll go home as soon as I've finished... things." _You smell so good._

“You’re a real working bee. Everyone else wants to call it a day right after lunch – well, maybe not Tosh, but even she leaves earlier than you do.” He was still grinning.

I seemed to have switched to automatic mode, just saying something without giving too much thought to what it was. "Told you I'd be good at my job." _Hold my hand._

"Yes, you did. Though you should have mentioned earlier that you looked so good in a suit." I felt his eyes wander over my body. I had never felt so naked in my clothes before.

"I'll... be sure to mention it next time." _Kiss me._

The captain laughed. "And don't forget about your outstanding coffee making skills."

I felt my cheeks turn to the deepest shade of red known to humankind – or at least it felt that way. It was impossible for him not to notice it. "I learned from the best." _I want to shag you._

"Just don’t stay until midnight – we have working hour regulations, you know.” He winked and turned to go. “I'll see you tomorrow morning."

My hands were trembling and I hoped he didn’t see it. "Eight o'clock exactly." _For the love of God, just fuck me._

"Good night, Ianto."

"Good night, sir." _Please..._

When he was gone, I collapsed into the nearest chair. By now my whole body was trembling and the tourist office echoed with the sound of my ragged breath. What was happening to me? Where had all of those thoughts suddenly come from? Why did Lisa seem to slip further away the closer I got to finding a cure for her? As I sat there in the gloomy office, I decided that it was time I found a real apartment. I wanted to be close to Lisa, but if being close to her meant that my mind would wander off to my boss and his body, I had to sacrifice that proximity. I set up an appointment with the first agent Google coughed up and then drowned my sorrow in Guinness. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well that night.

_I want to taste him._

Finding an apartment was surprisingly easy – mostly because unlike in my uni days I now actually had a disposable income. It has its advantages to be a civil servant. The agent showed me three places, and I took the one that was closest to the Plass. It was small and way too expensive for its size, but I couldn’t care less. I was doing it for Lisa. For her, for our love, our relationship.

_The captain would look good on our bed._

Moving into my new apartment was harder than I had thought. I had forgotten how much furniture, clothing and other stuff we had assembled at our home in London. I had enough space at my new place, but transporting everything all alone was exhausting. Back in London, I had had help from a few of Lisa’s friends who had urged me to tell them my new address so they could come by and visit me – the perfect mourning boyfriend. I didn’t have any friends in Cardiff. I had burned my bridges when I left for London and I didn’t intend to rebuild them. I hadn’t even told my sister that I was back.

_I wonder whether he has siblings…_

No one at Torchwood Cardiff seemed to notice my exhaustion. I knew I had dark circles under my eyes, but I tried to conceal my fatigue by staying in the tourist office most of the time. And when I came down with the lunch orders, they were more interested in the food anyway. Lisa didn’t say anything either, but then again she was talking less and less as the weeks passed by. She had told me to get a stronger pain killer and it seemed to do its job much too well. I still hadn’t managed to find the Japanese research group (mostly because my Japanese consisted solely of “konnichiwa”), and I could see that I was running out of time. 

_Hold me._

I was in the archive, sorting through a box with alien devices Suzie had given me. The archive was still a mess, but I was the only one who had at least a slight idea where to put things. “They’re ex-Torchwood London, you should know what it is,” Suzie had said, but I found myself staring at the silvery shining technical things without even a hint as to what they were good for.

“Memory manipulator from Persei 7-c. Seems to be broken, otherwise you’d be out on a shopping spree. Their version of manipulative advertising, you know.”

Startled, I let the round device fall from my hand. As I whirled around, Captain Harkness was standing in the doorway, smiling. _What is that look on your face?_

“You look pale these days.” He took the last few steps to me until his chest was barely ten centimetres away from mine. “Maybe you’ve caught a cold – it’s pretty humid around here…” He looked intently at me, and I felt the blood rising to my cheeks. “How’s your temperature?” And without further warning, he put his hand on my forehead. 

_…_

My mind went blank. All I could do was staring at the captain and his blue eyes and feeling my cheeks turn hotter by the second. My knees started to tremble and I was convinced that I would fade any second. Then I saw him smile, close his eyes, lean forward – and plant his lips on mine. I kissed him back immediately, but the rest of my body seemed to be frozen in place. I couldn’t close my eyes, but I liked the soft touch of his lips, and the slight scraping of his skin. 

_Good._

When he slowly withdrew, my brain returned to work – or at least my primary instincts did. I wanted to say something, like “thank you” or “don’t stop” or “take me”, but instead I just ran away. I felt the tears dwell up in my eyes as I made my way down to Lisa. What was I doing? I mustn’t kiss someone else! And even if I did, I certainly mustn’t enjoy it! I stopped dead in my tracks in front of the door to Lisa’s hiding place. I couldn’t go in there. She would look into my eyes and know that I had kissed someone else. She may have been covered in metal, but she wasn’t a fool. Then again, maybe it was best to come clean right away and promise that it wouldn’t happen again.

_But I want it to happen again._

I was standing in front of the door for what must have been an hour or more. When I finally went in, I couldn’t say a word. I just held Lisa’s hand a cried, but her mind was too far gone to notice what was going on. I fell asleep by her side, but in my dream I was once again kissing Captain Harkness.

_His lips are so warm._

In fact, I soon found myself kissing him again in reality as well. Apparently, running away after your first kiss is an invitation to court you even more. I felt guilty, but in the end I decided that kissing didn’t hurt anyone. When Lisa was herself again, I would confess and explain that I had been weak because of all the stress I had been going through, but that in my heart there had only ever been her.

_A heart can belong to more than just one person._

Captain Harkness was a wonderful kisser. I was constantly amazed by the things his lips did to me, especially since I was aware that I was a pretty bad kisser. Before the captain, the best kisser I had ever met had been Seren. She had been my girlfriend for two weeks, and then she ditched me, partly due to my lack of kissing skills. The captain couldn’t care less, even downright lied to me. “You’re good.”

_You make me happy._

Late at night in my apartment, I found my mind wandering back to my final school years, to Tommy and what I then considered the most intense crush in the history of humanity. My mind was particularly interested in that one memory of the night in his garden and my first (and to date last) sexual encounter with another boy. The next week, he had brushed it away with a casual “Yeah, we were both pretty drunk,” and it still hurt to remember the look he had had on his face. If I had told tad, he would have insisted that Tommy had to answer for my bad A-level results. But I had never told anyone about it, not even Lisa, not even the one or two times she had mentioned her ex-boyfriends. There’s no use in reminiscing about intimacies of the past.

_But the sex had felt good. I wonder how it would feel with Captain Harkness._

My search for Lisa’s cure and the Japanese research team was finally making some progress. At least I had discovered a certain Professor Nakahara somewhere in Nagoya who seemed to have some connection to the team I was looking for. The only problem was that his (or her?) English was more or less non-existent and the English of his (or her?) assistant wasn’t much better. My only hope was that Toshiko’s translation programme would not only work for alien languages, and that it wasn’t too complicated for me to hack into. I had learned quite a bit at Torchwood London, but MI5-level security was still far beyond my abilities. Yet my joy was tarnished when I sat at Lisa’s side. The humidity of the Hub’s cellars seemed to prey on her mind and she was getting weaker every day. Not even the news about Professor Nakahara could revive her spirits.

_Notice me._

The days seemed to drag on. Even when the sun was shining my heart was filled with sadness. I was constantly torn between being worried about Lisa and yearning for Captain Harkness. And neither of them was aware of it. I tried to brush the thoughts away like the dust on the Hub’s furniture, but one night it just became too much. Professor Nakahara had sent another more or less incomprehensible email, Lisa had been maundering about “upgrading” something, Rhia had been leaving at least ten messages on my voice mail, Captain Harkness had “accidentally” brushed my hand when I had served him coffee that morning... I saw my tears hitting the low table before I even felt them rolling down my cheeks. I made no effort to dry them.

_Help me._

I heard the footsteps, and when I dared to open my eyes, I was looking at a snow white handkerchief. Holding it was a hand, and that hand belonged to Captain Harkness. Mortified, I turned away. But he didn’t go away, just stood there holding the handkerchief, and so I finally gave in and took it. I shouldn’t have. I guess. It dried my tears, but to suddenly have his intense smell so close to my nose was overwhelming. I looked into the captain’s deep blue eyes, and for the first time in a very long while, my mouth formed the same words that my mind was uttering: “Please…”

Amazingly, he understood what that one word was trying to tell him. He closed the distance between us and captured my trembling lips with his firm ones. I felt the spark again, the one I had already felt the first time, but had ignored because it was the same I had always felt when I had kissed Lisa. The spark that started out as hundreds of stars before my eyes, turned to millions of butterflies in my stomach and went straight into my cock. Before I knew what I was doing, my tongue had already deepened the kiss, and the captain gracefully responded to it, introducing me to the world of wonder that was his mouth.

I could have stopped there. I should have stopped there. It would have been the reasonable thing to do. But my emotions refused to be subdued by logic any longer – they wanted to feel again. They wanted everything. As I held on tightly to his upper arms, my feet shuffled backwards, and when my legs hit the couch, I let myself fall down, pulling the captain with me. It was only then that I once again lacked the courage to proceed any further. Thankfully, he was comfortable with taking the lead himself. Within minutes, we were both naked, and before my brain had any chance for second thoughts, his hands had already found out where I liked to be touched.

I don’t think I ever came so quickly before in my life. My mind was filled with want and need, and as the wave of pleasure rolled over me, I almost felt like I could fly. Light as a feather, bathed in sunlight, far away from all the problems down on earth. I didn’t have to think about anything anymore, I just knew that I wanted to give a small portion of that bliss back to him. My movements may not have been as artful as his, but his moans told me that he enjoyed it. My first times have a history of being awkward and not really satisfying, but this one was different.

Jack made me feel alive.

I didn’t think of Lisa. I didn’t have to. But when the afterglow ceded, she came back to my mind with more power than ever before. Guilt pushed away the light heartedness I had felt for a brief moment. It reminded me that Jack had a reputation for kissing and shagging everything in his vicinity, whether human or alien life form. He was artful, but you only earn skills through practice. I was just his latest conquest. 

I grabbed my clothes and ran home. Seeing Lisa was out of the question, she would smell the sex and she would know that it wasn’t another woman’s scent. I stood under the shower for an eternity, trying to scrub away every last reminder of Jack and me fucking. I tried to erase my memories with Guinness and the bottle of whiskey Lisa’s team had given her for her birthday last year. It tasted horrible, but rather than erasing any of the images in my mind, it only made me throw up on the kitchen floor. Sobbingly, I fell asleep next to the stinky mess.

I had gotten what I had wanted from the beginning. I had told myself that I was doing everything just for Lisa, for her life. But the ugly truth was that Lisa had become merely an excuse for me to be close to Jack. Maybe I will eventually find a cure for her, but by then I will already have sacrificed our relationship. Maybe she will return to being herself, but I won’t be the one I was any longer. And it will be all just my fault.


End file.
